I was at school in the late sixties, and all through the seventies, and early eighties and… children at that time, if they had problems it wasn’t recognised. You were just treated as bad kids, and disciplined all the time, rather than you know, having people wanting to talk to you, and help you.

So, you know, I was thought of as a very bad child, who used to misbehave, but it wasn’t anything like that at all. It was because of family problems. So I had to let it out somewhere. Because I was at school every day of the week, you know, when you’re a kid that’s most of your life is at school, so it had to come out somewhere, and so no I didn’t get any help at all.

I tried turning to my, my mother, my family had a very Victorian approach to mental health at the time. From a young age, I tried to express that I felt depressed and I was just told that I was being selfish and that only selfish people get depressed, because… [exhales breath] it was, you know, I was being self indulgent by being depressed, and that sort of thing.

So at about what age did you start to feel depressed?

I think probably around about six or seven, I can remember and also around that time I started to have hearing problems. And, I was in and out of hospital quite a lot, and I had various operations on my ears. I used to have grommets put in my ears….and that would mean at the time, you know, you probably sort of had two or three weeks off of school. And I can remember sort of going back to school and totally, this was in junior school, and just, you know, three weeks is a big gap, and I just would go back into class and I was just completely lost, where everybody would seem more advanced with what they’d learnt in those three weeks.

And so I started to feel, you know, I was starting to fall behind in education from a very young age, and nobody ever sat down with me, and let me know what was going on. So I was getting depressed because I started to feel stupid. I started to feel thick. I was under-achieving. And I started to feel very lost, but there was no support for me at the time. Sonbsp;

I do now, believe that there’s a lot that exists outside our current understanding. Like I was saying, you know, I think it’s very wrong to assume, because we don’t see it, doesn’t mean, it’s not there, you know, because we can’t touch something doesn’t mean it’s not there. I think, nothing’s very wrong, I believe that I have had a lot of psychic experiences, as you’ve just seen the film of my grandfather, doing stuff where he was known for using the powers of his mind, and going beyond the current understanding of the mind.

I believe those things do exist and it’s very, very wrong to psychiatry to assume, assume that anything outside the box is potential mental illness or psychosis. And I mean, I believe that a lot of stuff, may be psychosis and psychic is much so one in the same. And but I, a lot of confusion has come in my life where I, I’ve tried to speak to psychiatry about psychic experience and they’ve just told me, it’s a mental illness.

And I think that’s just very, very ignorant. You know, we know nothing.

We know nothing of the mind’s capabilities. We may, what our brain is there for, is to receive information, maybe, psychic experience is the brain doing its natural job and receiving information, but because that information that’s been received is not currently understood it’s wrong to say it’s mental illness. In my book but it’s very wrong. And that is not progression, you know, but that’s not progress to me. Maybe we’ve really start looking at certain experiences of schizophrenia and rather than just saying it’s mental illness. May be, you know, unless it’s been investigated, what is this experience about? You know, and may be some voices, you know, I’ve heard, you know, a lot of people that hear voices, may be some voices may be psychic. Many psychics have voices that speak to them, and they pass those voices on. Sometimes that’s happened to me. Other times I can recognise my voices have been caused by stress in life. And I’ve worked out what those voices are. I don’t think that they’re not psychic, you know, those voices I recognise have got nothing to do with being psychic, they are, they weren’t myself expressing anxiety and fears in life and they came out in voices. You know, but I don’t think all voices are mental illness.

To people who have just received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, I would say, accept the diagnosis, research the symptoms, acceptance and understanding of schizophrenia, and myself have played a massive role in my recovery. You know, accepting that I’m on medication. I accept I need that medication, because it helps me sleep, it does help me keep balanced. So you know, I’ve never played about with medication, I accept. I need that medication, I think understanding, it’s always good to research the condition, all angles, you know, there’s plenty of other theories about schizophrenia out there, other than just the psychiatric view.

I think people need to do lots of research… the other thing that helped me greatly in life was I started to work with my symptoms. For many years I feared the voices, I fought the delusions and the more I, the more I feared my diagnosis, and the symptoms, than actually the stronger it became. By accepting the voices, and accepting other things, sort of weakened it. The more accepting, acceptance and understanding I have in my symptoms, the more it relieved the symptoms. So I think acceptance and understanding. Be proud of who they are, there’s nothing wrong with schizophrenia at all. I think people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia are very unique people. it’s not a weakness. There’s a very creative side to schizophrenia and I think if we look back at history, people, even Einstein has been related to schizophrenia Van Gough, Newton, Isaac Newton, famous writers and artists, philosophers, people who have changed the way we think and act, you know, have been related to symptoms of schizophrenia. So it’s a very unique, creative condition. At this current time, it’s a very, very misunderstood condition.

One of my immediate responses to my diagnosis was, Oh good, when can I go back to work You know, I thought they were gonna sort me out and it meant I could go back to work, and get on with life. And I was just told that I had to accept it was likely I’d never work again in life, and I had to accept it was likely I’d never get over the schizophrenia and that was, that shocked me. You know, there was nothing positive given to me about the diagnosis. I expected, right, they’re going to do something, I’m going to have medication. Oh I didn’t actually realise medication at the time. I didn’t before I was diagnosed I’d been on Prozac for some years. And other medication I couldn’t remember but, you know, I had no understanding about antipsychotic medication or the medication that’s given for schizophrenia, so it was sort of relief, you know, that I could. I remember looking down the list and I think this list was provided, the leaflet was provided by the charity Rethink. And I looked down the list of all the symptoms of schizophrenia and I could just tick every box. You know, and I recognised it.

I took part in marching with the people against what was happening, but after the second night, the second day of me marching, I got a phone call about 2 a.m. in the morning. Which woke me up, and I answered the phone, and it was just this man in Russian, sort of swearing at me, really shouting and swearing at me. And I could, I spoke the language a bit at the time, so I understood he was swearing at me, and he was going on about me, you know, who the hell did I think I was involving myself in their business. And I just put the phone down and then I just sort of started, I started to experience this tenseness inside, and I remember my heart was pounding. And I suddenly started to really fear what I’d done, and, and, and I couldn’t sleep that night, and when I was walking round the hotel the next morning, I was just like, you know, felt that, I’d done something very wrong, and that… you know, that I was going to get harmed in some way. And I started to pick up on, sort of walking round the hotel, I, that people looked at me. I felt that they were, you know, it was they weren’t just looking at me, they all knew who I was and that somehow my life was starting to be in danger and…And it’s possible, you know, it’s… you know, it’s possible that they, they… you know, was I just a tourist? Why was I touring? You know, when all tourists at the time were given the option to leave Moscow and they did. And there’s a few other people that stayed, you know, but may be they were questioning my mean there was a lot of paranoia at the time, you know, with the cold war everything and being sort of… East and West, and they knew I was from the UK, and I think they be, you know, they were thinking who is this man? You know, and, and, so that, that, you know, sort of ignited my paranoia.